Before enrolling in IADT's Creative Music Production course Mikey graduated from BCFE with a Higher National Diploma in Contemporary Music Performance. During his time in BCFE he began recording his fellow classmates for fun. Helping other artists record and create music quickly became his main passion. Mikey's music performance days are now far behind him. Today he works with various different artists across various different genres as a sound/mixing engineer and producer in his own self-built project music studio, "Pine Copse Studio", located in Dublin. He also works as a freelance sound engineer in many other studios across Ireland.
Why do some songs gain worldwide commercial success and others fall by the wayside? Are there certain traits that all commercially successful pop songs have in common? This could all be very valuable information to any aspiring songwriter!
This project looks at the art of writing commercially successful pop songs. The most commercially successful pop songs from 3 of the most commercially successful pop albums from the years 2014 and 2015 were chosen to be analysed for this study. Areas of analysis included tempos, time signatures, keys, modes, durations, lyrics, consonance v. dissonance, vocals, song structure, chords and production. Findings from this analysis were used to help compile a set of guidelines that, if followed, could have aided the writing of a commercially successful pop song in the years 2014 and 2015. A pop song was then created following these guidelines.
The aim of this project was to compile a set of guidelines that, if followed, could have aided the writing of a commercially successful pop song in the years 2014 and 2015. Once the guidelines were established they were to be presented in an easily accessible and informative manner so that someone with minimal music knowledge could use and understand them. The Prezi presentation software was used for this and the set of guidelines can be viewed by clicking the "Other" link at the top of this page. A pop song was then to be written, recorded, produced and mixed strictly following the advice given in the set of guidelines.